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As multimedia journalists try to figure out how the Web changes video storytelling, it’s important to stay on top of research on the topic. Frank N. Magid Associates recently released results of a study that seems to indicate that TV stations need to develop a Web video strategy and fast.

Overall, the most-watched online videos are not professionally produced. According to the survey, video shot by consumers pulls in 43% of regular online video users. The second-most-viewed online video comes from news stories: 32%. Then comes music videos, 31%; movie previews, 29%; and comedy/bloopers, 26%.

Now, the good news in this is that just under a third of videos viewed are, in fact, news stories. But, what are TV stations doing to encourage appropriate audience contributions? And why aren’t all TV stations posting their own stories online? These are the questions TV stations need to be asking before they lose the video edge they still have.

Other important points from the study:

20% of all online video viewers watch less TV as a direct result of using online video.

Young males watch the most — 70% of men 18-24 watch online videos each week, including 25% who watch daily.

The biggest female group was girls 12-17. Fifty-six percent watch weekly, including the 13% who watch daily.

What motivates a person to devote almost as much time to a neighborhood blog as they do to a full time job? For Jacqueline Dupree, it’s a desire to document history. Dupree works for the Washington Post, maintaining the company’s Intranet. But she’s also the force behind JDLand, a blog that covers a 100-block area just south of Capitol Hill where the new Washington Nationals ballpark opened last year.

Dupree’s degree is in history, not technology or journalism. “It was the historian in me who wanted to document what it looked like before [the ballpark was built].”

Dupree spends about 30 hours a week on her blog, which she produces entirely alone. “I’m a control freak,” she admits.

JDLand aggregates stories from news organizations, links to original documents and databases, and provides an interactive map and extensive photo archive. Dupree also does a lot of independent reporting, covering government meetings almost no one else attends. “Traditional media can’t cover a neighborhood down to the level of detail I would like to see.”

Whenever possible, Dupree links to original documents on government Web sites, something many mainstream news organizations won’t do. “Reporters think, ‘I found it, it’s mine and I’ll tell you about it.'” But Dupree says linking has helped her earn the trust and respect of readers.

“I think people should know everything,” Dupree says, so she tells her users everything she knows. “People have never said this is too much information; [they] ask for more.”

Dupree doesn’t call herself a journalist and compares her blog to a Charles Dickens serial. “At heart, I’m telling a story about a neighborhood a chapter at a time.” But she says JDLand is journalism. “It’s ‘news over the fence,’ what people are talking about. The paper can’t cover all of that. Just because they can’t doesn’t mean it’s not news.”

Poynter recently hosted an online chat with NYU professor Jay Rosen and PressThink blogger on the subject of teaching people to blog.

Advice: Break news, say something that hasn’t been said, collate what no one has collated, and then link to the biggies when you publish.

So, why link to the “biggies,” as in popular blogs? Rosen says it’s not only the number of hits on your blog that help you measure success; he says it may be more important for your blog to be “getting links to sites that are ‘in’ the main conversation.” These are the blogs that are recognized as thought leaders on a particular topic.

What’s the best way to get people to link to you? Talk about them at your blog! Or link to some post they did, and then click a bunch of times on the link to their blog that you put in your post.

For a lot of journalists, this is an uncomfortable place to be – building off of other people’s work and taking on the task of self-promotion, but that’s what it seems we’re talking about here – alerting people to the work you’re doing in order to get them to view it. It’s just that in the past, for many mainstream journalists, there were folks in the promotion department doing the job for them.

Another way to get blog exposure? Use Twitter – something that can be particularly useful for a blog that updates less than daily.

Daily posting leads to people subscribing and checking back, but that’s not going to work unless you have new stuff to tell them; if your pace is more 2-3 times a week for longer posts that’s a different rhythm and will lead to a different user base with diferent expectations. My blog is on a “slow” rhythm and I use Twitter to activate it when I need it. But I long ago lost any users looking for a daily read.

Others in the conversation suggested putting alerts about new posts on Facebook or any other site that might draw additional viewers to your blog.

Rosen also admits that getting a blog off the ground is more difficult now that there’s so much competition, but if you’re reading this post, you may have one advantage.

Remember: most amateur bloggers are lazy. If you want to stand out, add more richness, do more work. Put in the time and save the user time.

Forget my MTV, I want my high-speed Internet access. The Pew Internet & American Life Project just released its latest survey on broadband penetration in the U.S., and even in these tough economic times, broadband adoption is growing. According to the survey, 63% of American adults now have high-speed access. That’s up about 15% from just a year ago and up 57% from just nine years ago.

Other interesting data from the study include statements on how people are using these high-speed connections. For example, 68% of people say broadband is either very or somewhat important to them in finding out what is going on in their communities. And 58% say high-speed access is very/somewhat important to them in sharing views with others about key issues. Newsrooms should be well positioned to serve those needs, but how many local news sites are truly centers for community conversation?

The study also indicates that the increase in broadband penetration has given journalists an opportunity to reach more diverse audiences online than ever before.

The majority group of home high-speed users who say broadband is very important for at least one topic listed are younger than other broadband users (the median age is 39 for the “very important” majority versus 43 for the rest) and more ethnically diverse. Some 25% of those who see broadband as “’very important” in at least one way are English-speaking Hispanics (15%) or African Americans (10%)….

For years news organizations have been researching local audiences to find out what they wanted; now it’s just as important to know what drives local Web audiences. These types of national surveys may offer a place to start in understanding how to improve the online news product.

Improv actors, a soundtrack and very little text. Is this the future of online journalism?

Consider what staid old Fortune magazine has been doing lately, in collaboration with the online magazine Flyp Media. Flyp has turned some of Fortune’s editorial content into imaginative multimedia features, like this piece on the Bernie Madoff investment scam. Fortune executive editor Steve Koepp told the AP, “It’s just an exciting new way to present the information to the reader. It’s a little taste of the future.”

Using Flash animation, video and other multimedia tools, Flyp has been telling stories online for about a year. The company is financed by Mexican billionaire Alfonso Romo Garza, a member of Forbes’ board of directors, who also funds the Spanish-language Web magazine Reporte Indigo.

The idea isn’t just to write a story and then add a video or an audio piece. It’s to really figure out the best way to conceptualize these stories as multimedia pieces.

Flyp may have an advantage over traditional media companies because its material is published only online. No one there has to worry about how the story will look in the newspaper or on TV. But the magazine’s approach underlines the importance of thinking differently from the start when you’re planning to produce multimedia journalism.

Here’s an Internet irony: the Web has made it possible for almost anyone to be a journalist but it’s also made the world more dangerous for anyone practising journalism. For the first time, according to the Committee to Project Journalists, online journalists are the largest group behind bars around the world. And all journalists are threatened, says CPJ’s Joel Simon, because militant groups no longer need journalists to get their message out and they’ve learned they can spread fear by attacking and murdering journalists.

Simon told a conference on Capitol Hill last week that in the past ten years the number of journalists killed in the line of duty has skyrocketed, primarily due to the Iraq war, which he called “the deadliest conflict for journalists in history. War reporting is obviously dangerous, but CPJ says most journalists killed in Iraq did not die in combat; two thirds of them were targeted and murdered.

CPJ and other journalism groups are calling for the passage of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act that would require the State Department to report annually on the state of press freedom worldwide and provide grants to strengthen media independence.

In connection with World Press Freedom Day (May 3), it’s important to note that a democratic system of government doesn’t ensure a free press. To the contrary, some of the countries ranked highest on CPJ’s “impunity index,” countries where journalists’ murders go unsolved, are nominally democracies: Russia, Colombia, the Philippines and Pakistan. Just another reminder that a free press should never be taken for granted.

Most newsrooms understand that they need to include video in their online offerings. If they haven’t started doing it yet, they’re behind the curve. But what’s the best service to use for posting video if you’re not going to host it yourself?

YouTube is certainly the most popular option, with more than 5 billion online videos. According to Nielsen Online, 89 million people use the service in the U.S. alone. It’s free and easy to use, but it’s not the only way to go.

Where to begin? Start by reading Jackie Hai’s brief review of YouTube and two alternatives–Vimeo and Blip–at Save the Media. She also covers options for streaming live Webcasts–Mogulus and UStream. As Hai puts it, the decision on which one to use “depends on what style of video journalism you’re going for.”